believe what is within is for us all... believe what you see as valid within your perspective and is mearly just one facet amoung many that make the greater whole of understanding... this is my little sparkle.
remember that each of us make their own respective flicker as part of the whole of light.
145 Days Cigarette free... been rough, been really rough... just seeing someone smoking makes me want one. But the decision has been made, and it has been getting easier... looking forward to the day that it is a bit more easy. Still kinda rough.
Been a while since i wrote here, and will say that with the new way of life, writing has been harder to swing. Wish i could be more free to discuss things here, and will need to make sure the bLogs are more separated from my business life so i can be more free to write what i need to write. Till then, suffice to say is that it is nice to be still here and kicking... will let you know when i am sure.
... i really hurt, miss my girllie AKA dewie-doe... she was really the most amazing thing i have ever experienced in my life... for years, i thought there was something wrong with me, that i pissed people off, and everyone would seem to fight with me... girlfriends were all like this, but two, where levels of this kind of agitation, caused a myriad of drama/fights... Doreen made me calm... in fact so calm, that my friend Abbey saw the change in me and made a point of noticing, unsolicited...
we could talk and work thru things really calmly until the beginning of my debacle started as we left Chicago... (will admit i was stupid here... suffice to say it was uncool...) calling Abbey, in tears, from a rest stop...
dewie and i really had been able to talk through things in an awesome way... i actually realized the significance of this in respects to helping inform my search for "the one"
Anyway, i spent the last 5 days trying to keep her from leaving to "get space." (major red flag - either you know you want "us" or you don't... any successful marriage that i know, "they knew" - maybe not immediately - but they knew. ) Because what she told me did not match what i saw in us or what she thought i wanted.
There is lot of love she has, had... and, supposedly now i have ruined it all... (boy i REALLY wish i had not, or that she even told me that) because honestly, i would like to think, my next relationship is always my last... these days it is getting really hard, as i feel more ready than ever... really more so, than ever before... anyway... to make a long story short: spent 5 days emoting (being the loud/sad emo boy) and prolly ruined everything... and that sucks. plain and simple...
why am i writing a blog entry about it - AND POSTING IT?! Well... easier than repeating this story to all my friends, reliving it in each conversation, is not something i want for me. I also know, i am not that far gone to realize, i have value, worth the win - and hope she finds the love that she desearves...
i have always had faith in myself, despite the world/situation... otherwise the growth and learning could never be possible... and i actually believed i could be the everything for this woman... and i will miss that possibility... because we seemed to fit better than anyone i have met for 18+ years...
i will miss her deeply... it is has been tough, not to want to call her, see her smiling face, walk on the right side... yeah... right side only... will always be special to her, for me... kindah sucks though - when and if i do get married i will definately think of her... remember and want to hear that happy hello, the one that was there before all of what now is, is.
i/it also probably did a good job in the subsequent "painting me worse" than i was for trying to "work it out" while possibly fully expressing true and honest-wacky-neurotic-ex-smoker brain in the deepest withdraw in years or in the current vernacular: was a whacked out emo boy... the whole spectrum of emotions/fears/loves in and of my life, i tragically tried only to share 100% and be in the conversation so that we BOTH had a complete understanding of where we were... and well... suffice to say... i lost her...
just spent the morning crying today... (had to put this into some rhetoric - to communicate the truth of what is in me... even if it is whimpy/sad/weird/or-what-ever-ya-want) at least it is from the heart flow (ironically i never wrote the words... "heart flow" is a line from a song - corny in a good way.) just wish it was enough for her to see how much she made me who i now know i can/could be with the right person...
i know that will take time to allow myself to just mourn this loss, that i will always wish i could have been more patient... because i do love her... i am just tired of the search, so bad, so bad... and that search, hoped, was over.
i am also sure this post will piss some others off, and will not say who... just gonnah say, "sorry i could not be more." i really needed to say this here... so that i/we can heal and move forward with love in our lives. i am very tired from all of this... i just want peace and happiness for you and yours... always have and will...
"A World that Stands as One" July 24th, 2008 - Berlin, Germany
Thank you to the citizens of Berlin and to the people of Germany. Let me thank Chancellor Merkel and Foreign Minister Steinmeier for welcoming me earlier today. Thank you Mayor Wowereit, the Berlin Senate, the police, and most of all thank you for this welcome.
I come to Berlin as so many of my countrymen have come before. Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen - a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world.
I know that I don't look like the Americans who've previously spoken in this great city. The journey that led me here is improbable. My mother was born in the heartland of America, but my father grew up herding goats in Kenya. His father - my grandfather - was a cook, a domestic servant to the British.
At the height of the Cold War, my father decided, like so many others in the forgotten corners of the world, that his yearning - his dream - required the freedom and opportunity promised by the West. And so he wrote letter after letter to universities all across America until somebody, somewhere answered his prayer for a better life.
That is why I'm here. And you are here because you too know that yearning. This city, of all cities, knows the dream of freedom. And you know that the only reason we stand here tonight is because men and women from both of our nations came together to work, and struggle, and sacrifice for that better life.
Ours is a partnership that truly began sixty years ago this summer, on the day when the first American plane touched down at Templehof.
On that day, much of this continent still lay in ruin. The rubble of this city had yet to be built into a wall. The Soviet shadow had swept across Eastern Europe, while in the West, America, Britain, and France took stock of their losses, and pondered how the world might be remade.
This is where the two sides met. And on the twenty-fourth of June, 1948, the Communists chose to blockade the western part of the city. They cut off food and supplies to more than two million Germans in an effort to extinguish the last flame of freedom in Berlin.
The size of our forces was no match for the much larger Soviet Army. And yet retreat would have allowed Communism to march across Europe. Where the last war had ended, another World War could have easily begun. All that stood in the way was Berlin.
And that's when the airlift began - when the largest and most unlikely rescue in history brought food and hope to the people of this city.
The odds were stacked against success. In the winter, a heavy fog filled the sky above, and many planes were forced to turn back without dropping off the needed supplies. The streets where we stand were filled with hungry families who had no comfort from the cold.
But in the darkest hours, the people of Berlin kept the flame of hope burning. The people of Berlin refused to give up. And on one fall day, hundreds of thousands of Berliners came here, to the Tiergarten, and heard the city's mayor implore the world not to give up on freedom. "There is only one possibility," he said. "For us to stand together united until this battle is won...The people of Berlin have spoken. We have done our duty, and we will keep on doing our duty. People of the world: now do your duty...People of the world, look at Berlin!"
People of the world - look at Berlin!
Look at Berlin, where Germans and Americans learned to work together and trust each other less than three years after facing each other on the field of battle.
Look at Berlin, where the determination of a people met the generosity of the Marshall Plan and created a German miracle; where a victory over tyranny gave rise to NATO, the greatest alliance ever formed to defend our common security.
Look at Berlin, where the bullet holes in the buildings and the somber stones and pillars near the Brandenburg Gate insist that we never forget our common humanity.
People of the world - look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.
Sixty years after the airlift, we are called upon again. History has led us to a new crossroad, with new promise and new peril. When you, the German people, tore down that wall - a wall that divided East and West; freedom and tyranny; fear and hope - walls came tumbling down around the world. From Kiev to Cape Town, prison camps were closed, and the doors of democracy were opened. Markets opened too, and the spread of information and technology reduced barriers to opportunity and prosperity. While the 20th century taught us that we share a common destiny, the 21st has revealed a world more intertwined than at any time in human history.
The fall of the Berlin Wall brought new hope. But that very closeness has given rise to new dangers - dangers that cannot be contained within the borders of a country or by the distance of an ocean.
The terrorists of September 11th plotted in Hamburg and trained in Kandahar and Karachi before killing thousands from all over the globe on American soil.
As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.
Poorly secured nuclear material in the former Soviet Union, or secrets from a scientist in Pakistan could help build a bomb that detonates in Paris. The poppies in Afghanistan become the heroin in Berlin. The poverty and violence in Somalia breeds the terror of tomorrow. The genocide in Darfur shames the conscience of us all.
In this new world, such dangerous currents have swept along faster than our efforts to contain them. That is why we cannot afford to be divided. No one nation, no matter how large or powerful, can defeat such challenges alone. None of us can deny these threats, or escape responsibility in meeting them. Yet, in the absence of Soviet tanks and a terrible wall, it has become easy to forget this truth. And if we're honest with each other, we know that sometimes, on both sides of the Atlantic, we have drifted apart, and forgotten our shared destiny.
In Europe, the view that America is part of what has gone wrong in our world, rather than a force to help make it right, has become all too common. In America, there are voices that deride and deny the importance of Europe's role in our security and our future. Both views miss the truth - that Europeans today are bearing new burdens and taking more responsibility in critical parts of the world; and that just as American bases built in the last century still help to defend the security of this continent, so does our country still sacrifice greatly for freedom around the globe.
Yes, there have been differences between America and Europe. No doubt, there will be differences in the future. But the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together. A change of leadership in Washington will not lift this burden. In this new century, Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more - not less. Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.
That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another.
The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.
We know they have fallen before. After centuries of strife, the people of Europe have formed a Union of promise and prosperity. Here, at the base of a column built to mark victory in war, we meet in the center of a Europe at peace. Not only have walls come down in Berlin, but they have come down in Belfast, where Protestant and Catholic found a way to live together; in the Balkans, where our Atlantic alliance ended wars and brought savage war criminals to justice; and in South Africa, where the struggle of a courageous people defeated apartheid.
So history reminds us that walls can be torn down. But the task is never easy. True partnership and true progress requires constant work and sustained sacrifice. They require sharing the burdens of development and diplomacy; of progress and peace. They require allies who will listen to each other, learn from each other and, most of all, trust each other.
That is why America cannot turn inward. That is why Europe cannot turn inward. America has no better partner than Europe. Now is the time to build new bridges across the globe as strong as the one that bound us across the Atlantic. Now is the time to join together, through constant cooperation, strong institutions, shared sacrifice, and a global commitment to progress, to meet the challenges of the 21st century. It was this spirit that led airlift planes to appear in the sky above our heads, and people to assemble where we stand today. And this is the moment when our nations - and all nations - must summon that spirit anew.
This is the moment when we must defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it. This threat is real and we cannot shrink from our responsibility to combat it. If we could create NATO to face down the Soviet Union, we can join in a new and global partnership to dismantle the networks that have struck in Madrid and Amman; in London and Bali; in Washington and New York. If we could win a battle of ideas against the communists, we can stand with the vast majority of Muslims who reject the extremism that leads to hate instead of hope.
This is the moment when we must renew our resolve to rout the terrorists who threaten our security in Afghanistan, and the traffickers who sell drugs on your streets. No one welcomes war. I recognize the enormous difficulties in Afghanistan. But my country and yours have a stake in seeing that NATO's first mission beyond Europe's borders is a success. For the people of Afghanistan, and for our shared security, the work must be done. America cannot do this alone. The Afghan people need our troops and your troops; our support and your support to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda, to develop their economy, and to help them rebuild their nation. We have too much at stake to turn back now.
This is the moment when we must renew the goal of a world without nuclear weapons. The two superpowers that faced each other across the wall of this city came too close too often to destroying all we have built and all that we love. With that wall gone, we need not stand idly by and watch the further spread of the deadly atom. It is time to secure all loose nuclear materials; to stop the spread of nuclear weapons; and to reduce the arsenals from another era. This is the moment to begin the work of seeking the peace of a world without nuclear weapons.
This is the moment when every nation in Europe must have the chance to choose its own tomorrow free from the shadows of yesterday. In this century, we need a strong European Union that deepens the security and prosperity of this continent, while extending a hand abroad. In this century - in this city of all cities - we must reject the Cold War mind-set of the past, and resolve to work with Russia when we can, to stand up for our values when we must, and to seek a partnership that extends across this entire continent.
This is the moment when we must build on the wealth that open markets have created, and share its benefits more equitably. Trade has been a cornerstone of our growth and global development. But we will not be able to sustain this growth if it favors the few, and not the many. Together, we must forge trade that truly rewards the work that creates wealth, with meaningful protections for our people and our planet. This is the moment for trade that is free and fair for all.
This is the moment we must help answer the call for a new dawn in the Middle East. My country must stand with yours and with Europe in sending a direct message to Iran that it must abandon its nuclear ambitions. We must support the Lebanese who have marched and bled for democracy, and the Israelis and Palestinians who seek a secure and lasting peace. And despite past differences, this is the moment when the world should support the millions of Iraqis who seek to rebuild their lives, even as we pass responsibility to the Iraqi government and finally bring this war to a close.
This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands. Let us resolve that all nations - including my own - will act with the same seriousness of purpose as has your nation, and reduce the carbon we send into our atmosphere. This is the moment to give our children back their future. This is the moment to stand as one.
And this is the moment when we must give hope to those left behind in a globalized world. We must remember that the Cold War born in this city was not a battle for land or treasure. Sixty years ago, the planes that flew over Berlin did not drop bombs; instead they delivered food, and coal, and candy to grateful children. And in that show of solidarity, those pilots won more than a military victory. They won hearts and minds; love and loyalty and trust - not just from the people in this city, but from all those who heard the story of what they did here.
Now the world will watch and remember what we do here - what we do with this moment. Will we extend our hand to the people in the forgotten corners of this world who yearn for lives marked by dignity and opportunity; by security and justice? Will we lift the child in Bangladesh from poverty, shelter the refugee in Chad, and banish the scourge of AIDS in our time?
Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe? Will we give meaning to the words "never again" in Darfur?
Will we acknowledge that there is no more powerful example than the one each of our nations projects to the world? Will we reject torture and stand for the rule of law? Will we welcome immigrants from different lands, and shun discrimination against those who don't look like us or worship like we do, and keep the promise of equality and opportunity for all of our people?
People of Berlin - people of the world - this is our moment. This is our time.
I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we've struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We've made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.
But I also know how much I love America. I know that for more than two centuries, we have strived - at great cost and great sacrifice - to form a more perfect union; to seek, with other nations, a more hopeful world. Our allegiance has never been to any particular tribe or kingdom - indeed, every language is spoken in our country; every culture has left its imprint on ours; every point of view is expressed in our public squares. What has always united us - what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America's shores - is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people: that we can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose and worship as we please.
These are the aspirations that joined the fates of all nations in this city. These aspirations are bigger than anything that drives us apart. It is because of these aspirations that the airlift began. It is because of these aspirations that all free people - everywhere - became citizens of Berlin. It is in pursuit of these aspirations that a new generation - our generation - must make our mark on the world.
People of Berlin - and people of the world - the scale of our challenge is great. The road ahead will be long. But I come before you to say that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom. We are a people of improbable hope. With an eye toward the future, with resolve in our hearts, let us remember this history, and answer our destiny, and remake the world once again.
Yep, you can have a live meeting with me online! Just try our new product at: QuickMeetLive.com... I am planning on having a standard room for me to use for promotional purposes... for now... i have a widget here that will facilitate us chatting now...
Photojournalist James Nachtwey sees his TED Prize wish come true, as we share his powerful photographs of XDR-TB, a drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis that's touching off a global medical crisis. Learn how to help at http://www.xdrtb.org
... ok... we are going to probably feel the effects of this "crash" of the economic de-regulation of the markets for years... will we be affected as small businesses and citizens on what they are calling "main street"? I seriously fear that this is just a tip of the iceberg that may be a symptom of something greater, or even more corrupted.
15% of the world population owns 95% of the wealth... and, in my eyes, this is the root of the issue. We need a more even distribution of wealth to STABILIZE the economy, and make more opportunities for people in need, living from pay-check to pay-check. Provide education, health care, and the basics of creating a situation that allows ALL man provide their own part of the whole. We need to be united in a new cause, one that will be bold, an awaking of the nobel spirit in everyman, allowing them to focus on personal and interpersonal expansion and enrichment.
Remember what it was like after 9/11? We all were personable to each other, for a month, then got tired of the effort... its sad. We need a way back to actually caring for all beings, all great, and small...
John McCain has acknowledged that he is “an illiterate” when it comes to computers. He said he “has to rely on his wife for all the assistance he can get.” At the Personal Democracy Forum last month, McCain aide Mark Soohoo argued in McCain’s defense that “you don’t have to use a computer to understand how it shapes the country.”
It's The Fourth of July, but not everyone was in a festive mood when President Bush delivered a speech Thursday at Thomas Jefferson's famous home, Monticello. Cries of "War Criminal" and "Fascist" are heard! Pretty wild stuff... Video available!
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